10.6 to leave ZFS to servers, make printer drivers on demand

The next version of Mac OS X reportedly won't have full support for ZFS in the …

As we march toward the expected summer release of the next version of Mac OS X—cleverly named Snow Leopard—details continue to emerge. AppleInsider is reporting that Apple will fully support ZFS filesystems, but only in Mac OS X Server. Also, Snow Leopard will install printer drivers on demand to shave gigabytes off of a standard Mac OS X install.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard was expected to add support for the ZFS filesystem developed by Sun. When it was released, however, it only supported reading ZFS filesystems. You can grab a fully-ported ZFS filesystem from MacOSforge, but it's command line only—there's no integration with Disk Utility to create and manage ZFS storage pools nor in the Finder for most common tasks. Snow Leopard is expected to add further support for ZFS, but according to anonymous sources speaking to AppleInsider, only Snow Leopard Server will include full, OS-wide support for what is regarded as the future of filesystems.

How much of that support will fit into the client version beyond reading ZFS filesystems is unclear. The evidence suggests, however, that support in Server is the first step in establishing later support in Mac OS X client. Many of the benefits of ZFS apply mainly to server-based storage, and have little advantage to systems with a single disk, like iMacs or Apple's hugely popular notebooks. At the same time, creating and accessing data from a storage pool on a home server may be de rigueur in the not too distant future.

Also, one of the goals Apple set for Snow Leopard is trimming down the size of a standard OS install. Though Leopard contains code to run on both PPC and Intel machines, it also has gigs of extra things like foreign language localizations, fonts for displaying several Asian languages, and thousands upon thousands of printer drivers. Beyond making Snow Leopard Intel-only, Apple apparently plans to trim the fat by only installing printer drivers for those printers that are already set up. Drivers for new printers will be installed on demand via a network connection.

Leopard already has a system built in that will search for updated drivers when setting up a printer, so it shouldn't be terribly difficult to make it the default method for grabbing the latest version when a new printer is installed. Though this could cause issues for those without an always-on connection, I think the benefit of cutting an unnecessary 4GB out of a standard install outweighs the drawback of not having drivers for every printer known to man installed by default.

Though Snow Leopard isn't expected to have many obvious user-centric features, under-the-hood changes like these have me excited.

21 Reader Comments

Its nice to see them slimming down the install. One of the things when installing OSX on tiny drives (8GB, 16GB SSDs) is removing X11, printer drivers, the 500MB Alex voice file, etc. It might be indicative of Apple going netbook, or at least very thin form factor with on-board flash as the HDD. There isn't much incentive to save a GB or so when the smallest laptop HDD their products come with is 120GB. Even with 80GB SSDs for notebooks, its marginal.

With the shrinking of the OS maybe part of the plan would be a direct download of the system upgrade through Software Update in the Apple menu. A link could be added to facilitate a payment. Saves money on boxes and shipping but also can be a solution to the clone problem.

^^ I would never want to upgrade my entire operating system via over-air web download. And I think that summer is entirely too optimistic regarding the release date. Apple still needs to decide on a solution to the big 64bit problem: go with a half-assed 32bit kernel across the board or go with a pure x64 kernel and shut out all PPC and pre-Core2 x86 owners, as well as break compatibility with all the contemporary system preferences and kernel modules out there. Neither is an entirely desirable position.

It does suck that either way Apple goes, it is dropping PPC support entirely. I honestly don't understand their decision here--compilers seem to generate code for both platforms right now, despite the fact that all of the recent optimization work has been for the x86 platform, it seems silly to just throw away all the platform-independence that has already been developed. PPC development is a sunk cost; the money spent developing that architecture has already been spent, so a PPC port would essentially be free.

As somebody that uses an iMac as both a workstation and a home Server system I am quite disappointed to hear that I won't be getting ZFS support. I was really looking forward to being able span file systems across disks and resize them as needed.

PPC development is a sunk cost; the money spent developing that architecture has already been spent, so a PPC port would essentially be free.

Actually, it's a pretty significant cost -- perhaps the development is free (not always, but in many cases it is), but you are testing and debugging two completely different builds of the OS with different underpinnings. And in general you're greatly expanding the amount of testing needed. (Unless you would be happy to get a PPC Snow Leopard that just plain didn't boot, that is.)

On top of that, the PPC Macs are getting scarcer at Apple. Just like anywhere else, the computers of the engineers and testers have to be replaced every few years. After a certain age if a machine dies it's not worth fixing -- they simply don't keep warehouses of old machines and old spare parts around.

It's a bummer, granted. But it's pure business ROI... eventually the PPC support is simply not worth the cost any more.

I'm looking forward to ZFS's data integrity more than anything. I've got multiple TBs of data accumulated (mostly media files) and am nervous about long-term bit rot. RAID-Z would also be a welcome addition for more advanced home servers. I'm weighing if a Mac Mini running 10.6 Server and an external drive array using a SATA port multiplier might be a reasonable option, given the value of all the data.

(People have hacked - literally - the Mini to run the SATA cable outside the case. If the next version includes a second SATA port as rumored it could be a viable server machine with a little work.)

Originally posted by Riemann Zeta:And I think that summer is entirely too optimistic regarding the release date. Apple still needs to decide on a solution to the big 64bit problem: go with a half-assed 32bit kernel across the board or go with a pure x64 kernel and shut out all PPC and pre-Core2 x86 owners, as well as break compatibility with all the contemporary system preferences and kernel modules out there. Neither is an entirely desirable position.

The alternatives you describe are those faced by pretty much every operating system except Mac OS X, thanks to universal binaries. Everything we've heard so far indicates that the Snow Leopard kernel will be fully 64-bit, as will the user-land. Everything will be provided as 32-bit/64-bit universal binaries, though, so the early Intel Macs won't be left off just yet. Plus, large parts of the user-land will need to be provided in PowerPC versions as well, unless they remove binary emulation. All of this isn't terribly important; the drive space used by binary executables isn't all that much compared to that of resource files.

Originally posted by Dlux:I'm weighing if a Mac Mini running 10.6 Server and an external drive array using a SATA port multiplier might be a reasonable option, given the value of all the data.

With a bit of luck, the ZFS support in Disk Utility will be similar to Journaled or Case Sensitive HFS prior to their official inclusion in client versions. Merely adding a file called ‘ServerVersion.plist’ in the CoreServices directory the revealed the UI. This might make you Mini server ever so slightly more cost-effective

I imagine they're making ZFS server only to cut down on support calls in this release. Once they have the kinks and user interface worked out by testing them on the server folks it'll start to appear in the consumer OS X.

I hope that this is the beginning of a push for Mac OS Server. It is already quite good, but apple hasn't given it very much love. But if they can fully support the ZFS file system, it will turn some heads. There's a good reason why major advances in file systems come maybe once a decade. It is some of the most legacy constrained software on the planet.

There is basically nothing more important to a server than storage/file management. If apple can make a fast, stable OS with a kickass file system, they could really make a dent in quite a few server markets.

Originally posted by Atroz:As somebody that uses an iMac as both a workstation and a home Server system I am quite disappointed to hear that I won't be getting ZFS support. I was really looking forward to being able span file systems across disks and resize them as needed.

If you're willing to do a little commandline work, you can use ZFS now. zfs.macosforge.org

"Though this could cause issues for those without an always-on connection, I think the benefit of cutting an unnecessary 4GB out of a standard install outweighs the drawback of not having drivers for every printer known to man installed by default."

This is precisely when you need it: on the go, wanting to print some stuff urgently on a customer's printer. And generally you only have access to the lan. And you don't want to spend some time downloading and installing a 50mb driver, you need it right now. This is what's good with macs: it just works (or it doesn't at all). Moving those drivers away just removes part of the magic, no matter how easy you make it to install it back. Besides 4Gb is just ridiculous on a 200GB disk. If you come up to being that much short on space, then you certainly have that much crap to throw out anyway. Granted, I understand the opposite point (slimming the OS), but there's limits to everything.

If they are slimming down the OS, they must be considering digital distribution. Would they do this through iTunes I wonder? The infrastructure is already there. Why invent the wheel again. OTOH, it would be weird to buy an OS from iTunes.